Hey all, not been around much! I made this a while ago but I think it's too big for the game! and her arms look a bit skinny, the head too big.
[img:35:73]http://cat-biscuit.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/ayla_d2.gif[/img]

I still love doing pixel art. Since graduating I've been looking for jobs and commissions like crazy, it's a tough world.

alenacat wrote:Hey all, not been around much! I made this a while ago but I think it's too big for the game! and her arms look a bit skinny, the head too big.[img:35:73]http://cat-biscuit.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/ayla_d2.gif[/img]

That's neat, but as you said, it completely doesn't fit into allacrost.

alenacat wrote:I still love doing pixel art. Since graduating I've been looking for jobs and commissions like crazy, it's a tough world.

It started as an edit of Alenacat's lady in the red dress with the blue hair (which I myself actually did some major work on, back in the day), which rapidly got out of control. This is a female shopkeeper:

The perceptive among you will note that this borrows heavily from both Vanica and Marcus - especially from Marcus' color set. I don't know what dark voodoo Safir-Kreuz does to pick those colors, but damn does he pick them well. I wish I could do that (color is kinda one of my weak points).

Jetryl wrote:Here's C&C in pictorial form. Notes:1] The far foot is visible, which makes this look -not- like a direct side view (which would be bad).2] I did some subtle modifications to the head, and it is in fact dimorphic (e.g. different) for each direction - but the bangs are the only difference you need to draw between the two sides.3] Lots of other little stuff that isn't worth mentioning - note that for hair, or for shading in general, if you have some texture which in the dark region consists of "a dark shade of the color next to black", when you move towards the lighter section, you can have "a light shade of the color next to a dark shade". But the trick is to actually put the dark shade, then, in the recessed spots where the black used to be. Look at the following image, which isn't really anything in particular (maybe a grooved tire viewed directly from the side?), but is intended to show this "swap" of roles for pixels.

Also - this assignment has expanded slightly - from looking at it, the north-walk frames have no movement of the dress, which they need to have.[img:192:256]http://www.allacrost.org/staff/user/jetryl/NPCs/woman_npc02_walk.png[/img]

Recap:

These sprites are ready to be animated:

These sprites are in-progress, and you can find all of the "progress so far" in this thread:

Actually, come to look at it properly, his shoulder pad probably shouldn't get as enlarged as the soldier's was and his tunic turns too much, this isn't the final version, but I need to sleep so it will do for now.

This seems to be all there is. Ranger M is not currently active, so I think you can go ahead and work on it.

Okay, for starters, do all the sprites as pixel art. Map tiles don't necessarily have to be so, but the sprites need to be done that way. I didn't realize this till I looked closely, but this should be adhered to.

A side effect of this is that you'll see how strong of an effect you can get in shading by laying down the most significant (like with bits) color areas. By laying down a mere 2-3 different shades of a given color, you can get nearly all of the effect you'd get with 90 different shades.

By, "do all the sprites in pixel art," I mean, there is a limited color table defined for the sprite. You are expected to use this by just looking at the sprite, and sampling the colors used there. Use only the colors in this table, when you draw things.

I've edited your latest work to both use only the colors that S-K used in his original sprite, and to fix the hair such that it's rendered correctly. In terms of layout, and approximate placement of color, you're mostly correct.

I came to a sudden realization as I was editing this sprite, and looking at S-K's Claudius sprite. Something about this sprite was looking stiff, stilted. The realization was simple: Our standing frames for side-views should not be in exact "profile" alignment". The sprite, rather than facing perfectly to the side, should actually be angled some 5-10° towards us. Enough to show the tip of the far arm, and to show a bit more of the far leg, and yet have most other features look like full profile.

For some reason, of which I'm not totally sure, this looks better. It might be because the shape of the body changes quite a bit when we snap into that 1° that makes up profile; suddenly a full arm and leg disappear from view. We're more used to seeing humans from the other 350-odd degrees that they can be oriented in. This is just a guess of course - I don't really know what causes this effect, and it would be absurd for me to attempt to "prove" that with any certainty; the reason for which notwithstanding, angling the sprite slightly to break it "out of the box" looks better. In fact, this is a fix I could stand to make to one or two other sprites of ours...

Anyways, here is a finished front, side, and back pose for this guy. Have at the walking animation frames.